English

Fundraising by data companies in 2021

2022-02-21 2021 | fundraising

2021 was quite an exciting year in terms of funding for both data startups and established companies. We tracked more than a hundred data-related funding events during the year.

Several vendor has raised more than once, most notably AirByte that went through three rounds ($5.2M, $26M and $150M). Databricks was the largest fundraiser with a total of USD $2.6 billion in 2 rounds.

Click here for the hi-res version

General data platforms and infrastructure
This category mostly includes data companies not belonging to any of the more specific subcategories. Databricks leads with 2 mega-rounds, honorable mentions include Dremio (data lakes), Anyscale (working on scaling Python with Ray) and Coiled (working on scaling Python with Dask).

Databricks - $1.6B series H in August and $1B series G in February 2021
Dremio - $135M series D in January 2021
AnyScale - $100M series C in December 2021
StreamNative - $23M series A in September 2021
Treeverse - $23M series A in July 2021
Coiled - $21M series A in June 2021

Databases and SQL engines
This is our largest category due to the many different flavours of databases and SQL & NOSQL engines. The graph database segment was quite active with Neo4j and TigerGraph raising large rounds, followed by ArangoDB and MemGraph. Funding for analytic SQL engines and cloud DW platforms included Clickhouse, Firebolt, Starburst (Presto), Imply (Druid), StarTree (Apache Pinot), and Ahana (Presto). Other honorable mentions include Redis Labs (in-memory DB), distributed SQL vendors Yugabyte and Cockroach Labs, and time-series specialist TimeScale and QuestDB.

Neo4j - $325M series F in June 2021
Clickhouse - $250M series B in October 2021 and $50M series A in September
YugaByte - $188M series C in October 2021 and $48M series B in March 2021
Cockroach Labs - $160M series E in January 2021
Firebolt - $127M series B in June 2021
Redis Labs - $110M series G in April 2021
TigerGraph - $105M series C in February 2021
Starburst - $100M series C in January 2021
SingleStore - $80M series F in September 2021
Imply - $70M series C in June 2021
TimeScale - $40M series B in May 2021
ArangoDB - $27.8M series B in October 2021
Startree - $24M series A in May 2021
Ahana - $20M series A in August 2021
QuestDB - $12M series A in November 2021
MemGraph - $9.3M seed in October 2021

Data Integration, ETL and Reverse ETL

Cloud-based ETL was all the rage, where Fivetran raised the largest round, followed by Matillion and Hevo Data. In the open source segment Airbyte has gone from a $5.2M seed round in March to a $150M series B December in ten months and Meltano spun off Gitlab raising a seed round. Reverse ETL vendors Hightouch and Census raised early rounds. Prefect and ElementEtl (the company behind Dagster) focus on data orchestration and workflow management.

Fivetran - $565M series D in September 2021
AirByte - $5.2M seed in March 2021, $26M series A in May, $150M series B in December
dbt Labs - $150M series C in June 2021
Matillion - $100M series D in February 2021
Hightouch - $12M series A in July 2021, $40M series B in November 2021
Prefect - $11.5M series A in February 2021, $32M series B in June 2021
Hevo Data - $30M series B in December 2021
Census - $16M series A in February 2021
ElementETL - $14M series A in November 2021
Meltano - $4.2M seed in June 2021

Data Quality and observability

Data observability, data reliability and data quality vendors attracted a lot of attention in 2021. Monte Carlo and Big Eye raised twice within the year, and there are several other startups raising their first rounds.

Monte Carlo - $60M series C in August and $25M series B in February
BigEye - $45M series B in September 2021 and $17M series A in April 2021
AccelData - $35M series B in September 2021
Anomalo - $33M series A in October 2021
Datafold - $20M series A in November 2021
Soda - $13M series A in February 2021

Data governance, metadata, data catalogs

Collibra and Alation, both well established players in the data governance segment have raised significant rounds. There also new entrants raising their first rounds of capital: Stemma works on Amundsen which originates from Lyft, while Acryl Data focuses on the DataHub project coming from LinkedIn.

Collibra - $250M series F in November 2021
Alation - $110M series D in June 2021
Atlan - $16M series A in May 2021
Acryl Data - $9M seed in June 2021
Stemma - $4.8M seed in June 2021

BI and data visualization

Grafana (operational dashboards), Jedox (financial planning & EPM) and ThoughtSpot (search-based BI) are well-known vendors in the space, raising significant amounts of additional capital. Upcoming startups Metabase and Preset (working on Apache Superset) focuses on open source data visualization software. Noteable offers collaborative data visualization notebooks.

Grafana - $220M series C in August 2021
Jedox - $100M in January 2021
ToughtSpot - $100M series F in November 2021
Preset - $35.9M series B in August 2021
Metabase - $30M series B in August 2021
Noteable - $21M series A in November 2021

Data Science, ML, AI

It's a very broad and active category so the list is just a sample of a few selected subcategories: General data science and ML platforms (Dataiku, DataRobot, H20.ai), MLOPS (Weights & Biases, Comet), data labeling and annotation (Scale AI, Snorkel, Sama) and synthetic data generation (Gretel, Tonic). Streamlit and Hex provides productivity tools for data scientists and Iterative works on DVC.

Dataiku - $400M series E in August 2021
Scale AI - $325M series E in April 2021
DataRobot - $300M series G in July 2021
Weights & Biases - $135M series C in October 2021
Snorkel - $85M series C in August 2021 and $35M series B in April 2021
H2O.AI - $100M series E in November 2021
Sama - $70M series B in November 2021
Comet - $50M series B in November 2021
Gretel - $50M series B in October 2021
Streamlit - $35M series B in April 2021
Tonic.ai - $35M series B in September 2021
Hex - $5.5M seed in March 2021 and $16M series A in October
Iterative - $20M Series A in July 2021

Errors or omissions? Please drop me an email (bence@adat.blog) or reach out on LinkedIn.

Fundraising by data companies in 2021 – July and August

2021-09-10 English | fundraising

July and August were again quite active months, with 13 notable fundraising events. The list includes the 1.6 billion raise by Databricks and large rounds for Dataiku ($400M), Datarobot ($300M) and Grafana Labs ($220M).

It's interesting to see that the 2 major open source data visualization companies raised funds during the period: Preset (creators of Apache Superset, $39.5M) and Metabase ($30M).

It's also worth mentioning the launch of Voltron Data by Wes McKinney and Josh Patterson to further develop the Apache Arrow ecosystem and the $200M Couchbase IPO.

(hi-res version)

Data Platforms and Query Engines:

Databricks Raises $1.6 Billion Series H Investment at $38 Billion Valuation (August 2021, Previous round: February 2021)
Treeverse raises $23M to bring Git-like version control to data lakes (July 2021)
Ahana $20M Series A – Furthering our Vision of Open Data Lake Analytics with Presto (August 2021)
Introducing Tabular: Aim is to build a new kind of data platform around Apache Iceberg. (August 2021)

BI/Dataviz:

Grafana Labs Raises $220M to Accelerate Global Adoption and Development of Open Source Visualization and Observability Platform (August 2021)
Preset Raises $35.9M Series B to Democratize Business Intelligence (August 2021)
Insight Partners leads $30M round into Metabase, developing enterprise business intelligence tools (August 2021)

ETL, Data Quality and Observability:

Monte Carlo Raises Series C, Brings Funding to $101M to Help Companies Trust Their Data ($60 M, August 2021)
Hightouch has raised a Series A ($12 M, July 2021)
Redata:We raised our pre-seed round (August 2021)

AI and Machine Learning:

Dataiku Series E: Unleashing Everyday AI ($400 million, August 2021)
DataRobot Unveils Major Milestones, Including $300M Series G Funding Investment, Acquires Algorithmia (July 2021)
Berlin-based Colossyan raises €1 million to assist more businesses with its AI video generation tool (July 2021)

Fundraising by data companies in 2021 – Q1 & Q2

2021-07-12 English | fundraising

There was a huge influx of capital into the data technology sector in the first half of 2021. Databases, platforms, query engines, data quality and governance tools were all popular.

The orange color denotes the top 5 raises (Databricks, Neo4j, Cockroach Labs, dbt Labs (formerly Fishtown Analytics), Dremio) and the small markers show the (rudimentary) category for each company.

The chart now contains 29 fundraising events with $2.83 billion in total funding, not including the $828M Confluent IPO and the $5.3 billion Cloudera buyout.

Data Platforms and Query Engines:

Databricks raises $1B at $28B valuation as it reaches $425M ARR (February, 2021)
Dremio's $135M Series D (January, 2021)
Firebolt Ignites Growth with a $127M Series B Funding Round (June, 2021)
Starburst Announces $100M Series C Led by Andreessen Horowitz (January, 2021)
Imply Raises $70M in Series C fundin(June, 2021)
StarTree Secures $24 Million Funding to Commercialize “Blazing Fast” Analytics Platform Used by LinkedIn and Uber(May, 2021)

Databases:

Neo4j raises $325M as graph-based data analysis takes hold in enterprise (June, 2021)
Cockroach Labs scores $160M Series E on $2B valuation | TechCrunch (January, 2021)
TigerGraph Raises $105 Million to Accelerate Graph Analytics on the Cloud (February, 2021)
Yugabyte Secures $48M in Funding and Sets the Stage for Global Growth (March, 2021)
TimeScaleDB - $40 million to help developers measure everything that matters (May, 2021)

Metadata and datacatalogs:

Alation Raises $110 Million in Series D Funding for Popular Data Catalog (June, 2021)
Atlan raises $16M led by Insight Partners to build a collaboration hub for data-driven teams (May, 2021)
Acryl Data, emerges from stealth with $ 9 million from 8VC, LinkedIn and Insight – TechCrunch (June, 2021)
Stemma: Helping you trust your data - ($ 4.8M, June, 2021)

Data Quality and Observability:

Monte Carlo raises $25M for its data observability service (February, 2021)
Bigeye (formerly Toro) scores $17M Series A to automate data quality monitoring (April, 2021)

ETL and workflow:

dbt Labs - Of the Community, By the Community, For the Community ($ 150M, June, 2021)
Matillion Closes $100M Round To Make Data Useful (February, 2021)
Prefect Raises $11.5M in Series A Funding to Eliminate Negative Engineering in Dataflow Automation (February, 2021)
Airbyte, We Raised a $5M Seed Round With Accel to Become the Open-Source Standard for Data Integration (March, 2021)
Meltano Spins Out of GitLab, Raises $4.2M in Seed Funding Led by GV to Enhance Open Source Data Integration (June, 2021)

Other:

Jedox Announces $100+ Million Investment to Boost Global Growth and Leadership in Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) (January, 2021)
Why SafeGraph Raised a $45M Series B (April, 2021)
Our $35 million Series B - Streamlit (April, 2021)
Snowplow Analytics raises $10 million in Series A2 funding (January, 2021)

Fundraising by data companies in 2021 from July

The Python Dataviz Landscape talk at EuroPython 2020

2020-07-25 dataviz | EuroPython | Python

I gave a talk on the main Python data visualization libraries at the EuroPython 2020 Online conference.

The (slightly updated) presentation is here and the code examples are in this Google Colab notebook.

PyData Budapest #5 – Dataviz Evolution

2020-06-29 meetup | PyData

We are running the second event in our PyData Evolution meetup series on June 30, covering the quickly changing Python Data visualization landscape.

Meetup event page: www.meetup.com/PyData-Budapest/events/270866403

1) Philipp Rudiger: Holoviews/hvPlot & Panel

Materials

Presentation slides

Useful links:

2) Nicolas Kruchten: Plotly Express & Dash

Materials

Presentation slides

Useful links:

3) Maarten Breddels and Martin Renou : Voilà

Materials

Fundraising by data companies in 2021

Fundraising by data companies in 2021 – July and August

Fundraising by data companies in 2021 – Q1 & Q2

The Python Dataviz Landscape talk at EuroPython 2020

PyData Budapest #5 – Dataviz Evolution

Updates

Social media channels